I recently finished reading ‘Dark Star Safari’ by Paul Theroux, in which he relates the story of his travels through Africa. One quote particularly sticks out in my mind – upon the author making vague enquiries as to why there are certain African social problems, one chipper fellow answers in a north African accent, “too…
F1000 Posters continues to expand: guest post from Michael Markie, Associate Editor for F1000 Posters… It doesn’t seem that long ago since we were beating the drum about reaching our 1000th poster submission. Nevertheless, a mere four months on, F1000 Posters has doubled that feat in double quick time. Since our 1000th submission, we have…
Here’s an evaluation that coincides with the welcome return (welcome, really? Ed.) to our television screens of the ‘singing’-competition The X Factor – could having one’s tonsils removed improve one’s singing? Singers are understandably anxious about undergoing throat surgery in case it impairs their vocal performance. However, a recent paper from the Journal of Voice…
As Richard promised, here’s the latest guest blog post from Nando, his confessions of an F1000 addict… When I was invited to join F1000, I was very flattered of course. I knew about it, but I had no access to it. I have substantial experience in processing articles for journals; I even direct one (The…
A colleague in our editorial department forwarded an article from The Telegraph on to me this morning as it poses an interesting question: are we wasting money on alternative therapies? Apparently, the British spend around £2 billion a year on unproved alternative therapies, and 100% of cancer patients have used ‘alternative’ therapies. Examples in the…
After a week looking at retractions and getting thoroughly depressed, let’s lighten the mood a bit. I received (as a joke, I should add) someone’s bio in haiku form–my own fault, I asked for “a brief CV”–last week: I sit on my butt Hiding from controversy Dispensing wisdom Yeah, he’s in admin now. Can you…
How’s this for a demonstration of how science builds in incremental steps, on the efforts of others? And, sadly, how cracks in the foundation have effects further up in the edifice. In 2005, the laboratories of Fred Ausubel and Jorge Vivanco, at Harvard and Colorado State University respectively, published a paper in Nature, Mediation of…
We would like to extend our congratulations to Regina Fölster-Holst, Section Head in Pediatric Skin Diseases, for winning first prize in the “Science Interactive” competition. Run by Science in Dialogue, this is an initiative to bring scientists into conversation with “people of all ages and educational backgrounds”, “committed to the exchange and discussion of research…
Certain classes of papers in our trade have a lot of coauthors. Indeed, the average number of coauthors on papers indexed in PubMed has risen from 1.5 to 5 over the last sixty years. No surprise, really, given the nature of research that is being carried out today, where one or two people can not…
The other week we were comparing notes on the seriousness of articles published in certain leading journals. One of the papers was reporting on a trial, Does the fly matter? The CRACKPOT study in evidence based trout fishing. Another was the notorious Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic…
